Congratulations to the RoboRebels for a great 2016-17 Season!

The 1329 RoboRebels, a joint venture between Saint Louis Priory School and Visitation Academy of 58 boys and girls, is an extracurricular team where students develop a robot to compete in the FRC game Steamworks. They finished up their season earlier this month. Starting the season off in the summer of 2016, the RoboRebels leadership group, The Board (consisting of one faculty lead, three adult mentors, and six student leaders), started to plan out the season to the utmost detail. The team kicked off the season with an Extravaganza in October — an open house event, with food, fun, information and a canned food drive. Afterwards, training sessions opened up in November and December to prepare students for the impending build season kick-off event on Jan. 8. Once the details of the competition were released, the RoboRebels started to evaluate the rules of the competition, develop gameplay strategies and a plan to proceed with the six-week build season. During these six weeks, students worked long hours to prepare for the competitions in March. Groups of students tackled a variety of tasks, including reaching out to sponsors for funding; designing t-shirts, buttons and swag; building representations of the game field; developing prototypes for the robot; designing the robot in CAD software; fabricating sophisticated parts with a typical power tools, a 3D printer and a waterjet cutter; developing advanced control systems and Java programming. The students competed in the St. Louis and Central Illinois regionals, and even though they did not place for the final tournament, the knowledge gained from these experiences will prepare these students for a great future.